Mortality rate from accidents - The Herefordshire Partnership

Mortality rate from accidents

Mortality rate from accidents is currently included as a key indicator for the Community Strategy as in recent years Herefordshire's figures have been significantly¹ higher than for England. Mortality rates are presented per 100,000 population (to allow comparisons with other areas) and as three year rolling averages, to smooth out year on year fluctuations.

Herefordshire's mortality rate from accidents reached its lowest point in 1999-2001, with only 18 deaths per 100,000 population. Since then the mortality rate has increased at a much higher rate than seen for the West Midlands region and across England as a whole.

Comparator areas are those areas (PCTs in 2002-04 and local authorities in 2004-06), which have similar characteristics in terms of their demographic, household, housing, socio-economic, employment and industry sector composition.

In 2003-05 the PCTs that were the most 'similar' to Herefordshire were Shropshire County, Mid-Devon and Mendip. In 2004-06, the authorities that were the most similar were Mid-Devon, North Shropshire, Mendip and Kings Lynn & West Norfolk. An average (mean) of the data from these areas is given to allow comparison with Herefordshire.

When comparing with the comparator areas each year, differences were not statistically significant although the mortality rate for Herefordshire was higher in 2004-06 and slightly higher in 2003-05.

Chart 1. Mortality rates from accidents (per 100,000 population) for Herefordshire, the West Midlands region, England and an average of the most similar areas.

¹ Significantly - means statistically significant as shown by the confidence intervals. For more information about this please see the Reference Section.